Welcome - Sharing information with the community related to Microsoft SharePoint security, information protection and permissions. Topics will also cover identity federation, claims and software development. Articles will at times be technical and focussed at developers/architects. They will also be higher level and discuss concepts and customer use cases. Have a look around, share your thoughts and I do hope you find some helpful content.

Follow me on Twitter @AntonioMaio2

Friday, October 9, 2015

Data Visualization Options in SharePoint and Office 365

A big thank you to everyone that attended my recent presentation last week in Houston on Data Visualization Options in SharePoint 2013 and Office 365. We had a great turn out for our round table presentation with a lot of great dialog and questions.

To summarize a few points from the session, Microsoft has several great data visualization tools available for SharePoint, including:

Excel Services

PowerPivot

SSRS

PowerView

PowerBI

Custom code with JavaScript

PowerBI

Datazen

Performance Point

Visio Services

Our presentation did not cover Performance Point or Visio Services due to the relatively low usage we see of those components.

Knowing which tool to use in which scenario can be really challenging. So as part of the presentation we talked about the 3 questions you need to ask your self when choosing a tool, and we went through following use cases to help you decide the best tool for the job. To recap that information...

The 3 questions to ask yourself when selecting a SharePoint data visualization tool:

What do you want to do with your data? Do you want to create reports, create dashboards, data analysis, data discovery?

Which devices are users consuming data on? Are they using desktops, tablets, smart phones?

Where is your data located? Is your data on premise or in the cloud?

The various use cases we went through were the following, with our recommended data visualization tool.

Use Case 1

I am an Excel pro. I have a lot of data. I have SharePoint on-prem… and I need to provide and share info to many users on Intranet

Recommended tool: Power Pivot

Use Case 2

I have SharePoint on-prem. I want users to do data analysis and discovery on the intranet (SharePoint 2010/2013) on their own.

Recommended tool: PowerView

Use Case 3

I have SharePoint on-prem, and need to provide reports to business users on my intranet which they will print. I would like power users to be able to create reports.

Recommended tool: SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)

Use Case 4

I have both Office 365 and SharePoint on-prem, do not have Power View, cannot use my on-prem data in the cloud, but still need to do some kind of Visualization.

1 comment:

About Me

Antonio Maio is an information security architect with over 25 years of experience in cyber security practices and systems, product management, software development and leadership. Antonio is currently a Senior Manager and Senior SharePoint Architect with Protiviti. He has been awarded a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award for 5 consecutive years, from 2012 to 2016, specializing in Microsoft SharePoint Server, Office 365 and Office Services. His background includes implementing cryptography and PKI systems, information security technologies, and both information governance and cybersecurity best practices. His experience with Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365 extends over the last 10 years. When he’s not helping enterprise, military or government organizations solve security challenges, you can catch him speaking at conferences or contributing to the community through this blog. In his spare time, Antonio likes to oil paint, run, make wine, read and spend time with his family.